The Great Paradox

Of course the first two people to offer “reasons” for the Connecticut mass shooting that weren't focused on America's nonexistent gun control were men of the Lord. First was Bryan Fischer, talk show host for American Family Radio, who spent the weekend sending out trolling tweets to his dozens of fans and thousands of hate-followers. Among his witty bursts:

Yes, using his logic, the six school teachers and 20 first-graders were a biblical Palestinian giant, while the shooter was a young King David.

Second up was former-possible-President/now-Fox-News-“personality” Mike Huckabee, who blamed the tragedy on the fact that the country has “systematically removed God from our schools”. Never mind the fact that it was later revealed the shooter was home-schooled. The fact is, crazy right-wing Christians love their right to bear arms and will find any excuse to do so, especially if it means cherry-picking Bible passages. But the problem is that it comes into direct conflict with another one of their other pet causes: abortion-denying.

The main response by gun nuts to pleas for bans on assault guns is, sorry folks, it's in the Constitution. We'd love to do so, but the sacred text of the Second Amendment guarantees the right to bear arms, and that can not be infringed upon. Which, OK, fine. Let's say these subscribers to Guns & Ammo are right. That the forefathers, in their infinite wisdom, envisioned a future where people could walk around with semi-automatic assault rifles and they were completely A-OK with that. It only makes sense, then, that the Christian Right should extend that belief of their forefathers's infallibility a few amendments down to the 14th, specifically the “due process” part, which gave women the right to choose after the Roe v Wade decision.

But that's periphery and complicated legalese and full of questions about the role of the Supreme Court. The biggest hypocrisy, free of all these hurdles, comes from the simple mind-fuck that is desperately fighting as hard as humanly possible to save the lives of unborn children, while simultaneously defending the right to possess a device whose sole purpose is taking the life of someone who was, previously, an unborn child. To these hypocrites, a perfect world consists of nothing but wombs and guns. The mental partition needed to allow this paradox can only come from those who truly believe they have the creator of worlds in their corner.

Onto the roundup!

- Those assholes at the Westboro Baptist Church are, of course, planning to picket Newtown. Hopefully Anonymous makes good on their promise to “progressively dismantle” their operation.

- A whole bunch of former Scientologists – including Tom Cruise's ex-girlfriend – got together to record a rap song attacking Scientology. The song is terrible, obviously. But the money from the single is going towards a good cause! (Helping assist those who have lost all connections after leaving the church.)

- The American Freedom Defense, the jerks behind the anti-Muslim ad campaign littering the subways of New York City, are sick of their signs getting defaced. So they're planning on buying ads next to clocks suspended from ceilings. This, presumably, will be a bit out of the way for graffiti artists, but I'm guessing they'll find a way.

- Facebook shut down an account set up by the Taliban in Pakistan that was used to recruit people to fight their cause. By the time they got to it, it had only 281 Likes.

- In New York, a 54-year-old ultra-Orthodox Jewish counsellor was found guilty of sexually abusing a 12-year-old girl. What was almost even more disgusting than the actual abuse in this case was the fact that, previously, members of the abuser's faith were trying to silence the accuser through intimidation techniques.

- While speaking at Princeton University last week, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was asked about his previous comments equating homosexuality to bestiality and murder. Scalia defended himself by theoretically asking, “If we can't have moral feelings against homosexuality, can we have it against murder? Can we have it against other things?” Asshole.

- Responding to a claim that a Texas district school curriculum has an “Islamic bias” in subjects they're teaching – as in, someone was complaining they teach too much about Muslims – an investigation concluded that, actually, Texas has a very obvious Christian bias. Christianity gets twice as much attention as any other religions.

- A human rights court ruled that the CIA tortured and sodomised a German citizen who they believed was a terrorist. It's the first time the CIA has been convicted specifically of torturing a detainee, but it surely won't be the last.

- Remember that shit-storm from last January when Susan G. Komen for the Cure (otherwise known as just 'Komen') tried to pull their funding from Planned Parenthood? Well, the now-former executive behind that decision, Karen Handel, gave a speech to the conservative Family Research Council promising to continue fighting the “schoolyard thugs” who make up Planned Parenthood.

And Our Person of the Week: Reverend Richard Cizik, an evangelical Christian leader, who pulled one heck of a two-fer last week, simultaneously urging the need to fight climate change, while suggesting the best way to do so is through family planning, i.e. contraception. And to help push along his agenda, he used actual statistical research. Well done, Rev.